We can’t let Uganda land go to large-scale farmers

With no education and skills to get Ugandans out of agriculture where some 90 percent earn their livelihood, land is the only asset and source of livelihood. Land is therefore a national security issue that cannot be traded for anything else. The British understood this and left Uganda land alone. A law was passed to keep land in Ugandans hands except for a few leases. So when Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi announced upon return from a foreign mission that peasants were going to be displaced and their land go to large-scale farmers, Ugandans were shocked, wondering how the decision had come about and where they would go or how they would earn their livelihood. Since then land has taken on special attention in debates. We would like the prime minister to tell the nation where his idea of displacing peasants came from.

Meanwhile, some Ugandans have conducted investigations. It appears that NRM government wants to join other African countries that are selling or leasing land for long periods to large scale farmers mostly foreigners as there aren’t many indigenous Uganda large-scale farmers. “Land grabbing” in Africa is a new concept that has become an international phenomenon. The concept refers to “the purchase or lease of vast tracts of land by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors mostly from poor developing countries in order to produce food for export”. Uganda is already a major exporter of food grown by peasants, with little left for their families.

NRM limiting Uganda family to three children

There are reports including on Ngoma Radio that NRM government plans to limit children per couple to three. The argument is that land is limited and there is no room for more people. There is something fundamentally wrong with this approach. Here are some thoughts. Details of my work are posted at www.kashambuzi.com

1. UK which has the same geographic size as Uganda has twice the population size of over 60 million.

2. Netherlands which has one of the highest population densities in the world is cultivating less land than before because productivity is very high.

3. Uganda needs to increase agricultural productivity and reduce extensive agriculture of clearing more land for crop cultivation and ranches. Also Ugandans should be trained for work outside agriculture so there is less pressure on the land.

4. Uganda statements are contradictory. On the one hand NRM preaches that Uganda has surplus arable land and is encouraging a liberal immigration policy to bring in more people from outside. East African economic integration and political federation will allow more people to move into Uganda. It doesn’t make sense to restrict Uganda families to three children when we are encouraging others to come into Uganda especially from neighboring countries of DRC, Burundi and Rwanda.

Impoverishing and conquering Uganda is NRM deliberate policy

Telling the truth is by and large a very difficult and potentially fatal task and requires tremendous courage and sacrifice. I pray every day for God’s guidance and protection because I feel very strongly that the truth about what is going wrong in Uganda must be told.

Many Ugandans at home and abroad know what is happening in Uganda but are afraid to stand up and resist. They are prepared to save their lives at the expense of their children who will have no home and no future in Uganda in the years ahead.

Many Ugandans have become greedy and short sighted at a great cost to their children. Becoming parliamentarian or minister or ambassador has become more important than protecting the interest of children and kith and kin. There are stories that some Ugandans are divorcing their wives and marrying Batutsi women to get access to state house and bachelors are chasing Batutsi women for marriage for the sole purpose of catching Museveni eye when he is making important appointments.

How to address land fragmentation in Uganda

In chapter one of my book titled “Uganda’s Development Agenda in the 21st Century and Related Regional Issues (2008)” I wrote about the challenges connected with land tenure and land use. One of the issues I addressed is land fragmentation which is not abating. Although many Ugandans are aware of the problems connected with tiny and scattered pieces of land, they are unwilling to address them. There are many reasons for this behavior.

First, culturally and sentimentally when the head of the family passes on every son and increasingly every daughter and widow (s) wants a piece of the land. The more members in the family the smaller the piece each member gets. And given low agricultural productivity (low yielding traditional seeds and absence of organic and inorganic fertilizers and irrigation technology), the tiny pieces of land do not produce enough to maintain a family for food and cash, pushing that family into deeper poverty if there are no alternative sources of income. This problem may be overcome in the short to medium term by changing the cultural and sentimental value of land so that inheritance goes to one member or inherited land is used collectively. In the long term poverty reduction may help reduce the size of the family because poor couples produce more children than rich ones.

Land is life

Fourth appearance on Radio Munansi

Greetings fellow Ugandans and friends

In this session I wish to share with you why in Uganda land is life and cannot be sold or leased to outsiders as is being done by NRM government.

1. Every human being needs land for a house, factory, recreation, garden, final resting place or a combination of all these functions.

2. Thus, every Ugandan whether educated, urban dweller, wage earner or not should have a piece of land. President Museveni stressed this point of land ownership when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 23, 2008. He stated that in Uganda all families own land. This point was well received by the audience.

3. Land ownership is especially vital for those who do not have non-agricultural skills.

4. Based on how an urban area is defined, some 90 percent of Ugandans still derive their livelihood from land.

5. The issue of land occupied the attention of colonial authorities. After serious debate between London and Entebbe taking into consideration the failure of European plantation agriculture in the 1920s, the colonial administration decided that Uganda’s land would be owned and worked virtually by Uganda peasants.

The guerrillas gave us NRM and are taking our land

The task of a researcher is to identify problems and make recommendations for policy makers to act on. A lot has been written and published about Uganda but much more remains to be done to identify challenges especially those related to globalization and East African community and the associated influx of foreigners looking for land to own.

Uganda is a country whose economy and livelihood of her people depend on land for food and foreign exchange. The land has been worked and owned by peasants for centuries. British colonial authorities respected and protected that age-old tradition. In 1986, NRM government presented a people-centered ten-point program confirming that land belongs to the people. It gave an assurance that peasants who lost their land due to political instability and/or faulty policies would get it back.

In 1987, the government launched structural adjustment with a major policy shift and a potential adverse impact on peasants. Private sector and market forces would drive Uganda’s economy and the distribution of assets. Studies were conducted that emphasized large-scale farming as a more appropriate model for speeding up economic growth and transformation from subsistence to commercial agriculture. In other words, peasants were presented as less productive than large-scale farmers and should give way to the latter. Other studies supported rapid urbanization as the fastest path to Uganda’s development, implying rural-urban influx to create room for large farmers. Free mobility and settlement would be facilitated through various instruments.

How Uganda became a land of thieves

The NRM government which is led by a religious president with a religious first lady must be embarrassed for presiding over a country whose citizens have largely become perpetual thieves. Everywhere you turn you read or hear stories about theft – of money and property and increasingly of children. People are no longer ashamed to be caught or accused of stealing. It has become normal to steal. There are those who steal because they are too poor to make ends meet and those who are already rich but steal to become filthy rich.

When we were growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s all religious faiths preached against stealing. If you found money, handkerchief, etc, etc, you took it to the nearest Protestant or Catholic priest so the item could be returned to the owner. On Sundays there would be announcements of the lost and found items. Those who found them would be praised. As a result, employees, housemaids, gardeners etc would not steal from their employers. Those who still managed to steal would be denounced in public and punished. This served as warning to potential thieves. At school, thieves would be called names and teased by fellow students until they left the school. Some thieves would confess and be forgiven.  Priests, church wardens and teachers never stole church money or school fees. They served as role models. These early exposures prepared many people from stealing in their adult life. Unfortunately, when economic hard times set in caused by political instability and economic decline, and corruption, stealing crept in and started to gather speed. 

Kagunga residents want their land back

Rukungiri town in southwest Uganda was recently (mid-2010) upgraded to a municipality by expanding its area into Kagunga sub-county. In upgrading the township to municipality status, the procedures at the district council and parliament levels were not followed, raising many suspicions. Since the upgrade and expansion, more suspicions are emerging from Kangunga residents due to a number of factors.

First, Rukungiri town is surrounded by two other sub-counties besides Kagunga. The other two sub-counties are Buyanja and Nyakagyeme. Buyanja and Nyakagyeme have flat topographical features suitable for urban expansion. Yet the expansion has covered only Kagunga sub-county which is hilly with deep and narrow river valleys making the area not suitable for urban growth. Kagunga unlike Buyanja has no electricity supply and Nyakagyeme can easily be supplied with electricity because it is closer to the town center. Technically and geographically Buyanja and Nyakagyeme should have been chosen over Kagunga. A better alternative is to let the town expand naturally.

Land may cause a civil war in Uganda

Following publication (New Vision July 8, 2010) of a statement delivered by national coordinator of security services, General David Tinyefuza when he made a courtesy call to the district administration on his way from Masindi Artillery headquarters, there have been consultations because this is a very strong and scary statement. But before we come to the substance of this article Ugandans need to understand two things.

The first observation is that this was not a courtesy call. This was a threat. According to the World Book Dictionary courtesy means polite behavior, thoughtfulness for others. Therefore a courtesy call means a short, formal visit paid by one government official or dignitary to another as an act of courtesy or etiquette. Etiquette means the customary or formal rules for behavior in polite society. The message conveyed by General David Tinyefuza, on his courtesy call did not reflect courtesy or politeness at all.

How peasants lose their land

From time immemorial, the rich and well connected have devised ways and means to grab peasants’ land for various motives. In this article we are going to examine what happened in the past and what is happening now or is likely to happen in the future. But first let us define peasants.

Peasants are “low-status cultivators who are trapped in a double bind of material poverty and political marginality. … Peasants labor in a subsistence economy that is typically precarious and subject to the predation of powerful elites. As a result, peasants in otherwise diverse cultural and historical contexts share a common vulnerability to natural and human made disaster that constrains peasant strategies in the direction of an emphasis on subsistence security and family survival” (Joel Krieger 1993).

There are many examples throughout the world showing how peasants have lost their land. In early 16th-century Europe, rising prices and bad harvests led landowners to squeeze peasants by raising rents, enclosing common lands and increasing feudal dues.